


a dialogue

by rory_the_dragon



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Casual and Vague BDSM Mentions, Day One, Flirting, Gratuitous Use of 'Dr May', M/M, Maycury Week 2020, References to Underage Sex, Roger is Freddie's Kid, Through irrelevant plot things, artist!freddie, parent/teacher AU, teacher!brian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rory_the_dragon/pseuds/rory_the_dragon
Summary: “Well, how was school, darling?” Freddie asks and listens with half an ear as Roger props himself in the doorway and rattles off the highlights of his day.His attention comes screaming back to him when he hears the words “detention”, “Dr May” and “wants you to come in and have a talk with him tomorrow, is that cool?” in quick, overly casual succession.(a parent/teacher au for Maycury Week 2020)
Relationships: Brian May/Freddie Mercury
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49
Collections: Maycury_Week_2020





	a dialogue

Freddie’s putting the finishing touches to his latest piece, a few final brushstrokes to the hands of the tastefully nude man he’s spent the last few weeks on, when Roger barrels into the apartment like the chattering, whirling, sixteen year old hurricane he is, heading straight for the kitchen with a carefree “Hi, Freddie!” called over his shoulder as he raids the fridge.

“Well, how was school, darling?” Freddie asks, still a little distracted as he contemplates adding a few extra lines around the shoulders, not sure if that’s better for the art or for his own preferences, and listens with half an ear as Roger props himself in the doorway with a cobbled together sandwich and rattles off the highlights of his day.

His attention comes screaming back to him when he hears the words “ _detention_ ”, “ _Dr May_ ” and “ _wants you to come in and have a talk with him tomorrow, is that cool?_ ” in quick, overly casual succession.

He leans around the canvas, paintbrush still in hand, to eye up the teenager who’s currently staring quite intently at the ceiling, then puts down his paintbrush. “What was that?” He asks again, fighting to keep his voice steady and firm because he _tries_ to be a good, responsible guardian. He always set a reasonable bedtime, made sure there was fresh fruit and veg in the house, taught Roger to read and write and sing and dance, wiped his tears when he cried and picked him up when he fell over, Freddie did all the easy parts fine.

Discipline is where he tends to fall down.

Roger’s smile is helpless and guilty. Freddie rues the day the little boy he raised ever became a teenager. A rebellious one, at that. Don’t think Freddie hasn’t noticed the cigarettes missing from his hidden away secret packets that Roger’s definitely not supposed to know about, the missing sips of vodka from Freddie’s drinks shelf or the packet of condoms he caught sight of in Roger’s open backpack last month. But so long as Roger is healthy, hale, and, thankfully, _safe_ , Freddie’s been happy to allow him his privacy. It’s not like _he_ wasn’t up to those sort of things at Roger’s age, at any rate, and Roger’s always known that he can come to Freddie whenever he needs to, unlike Freddie with his own parents.

Times like this, though, he really wishes Roger didn’t need to.

“Nothing bad, I promise,” Roger assures him, concerning Freddie more with the fact that an assurance was even necessary. “Dr May’s just a stickler for the rules. I forgot my essay, that’s all.”

Getting up and resigning himself to finishing his painting another day, Freddie wipes his hands. He approaches Roger in the doorway, and takes a moment to realise that somewhere in the past year Roger’s gotten taller than him. “Did you _do_ this essay you forgot?” He queries, and Roger grins in a flash.

“I’m doing it tonight?” He offers, and Freddie needs a drink. 

“How am I meant to go in there and defend you, to some stuck up _doctor_ , no less, when you appear to be entirely in the wrong?” He gives into the instinct and gets himself a glass of wine. Roger gives him and the bottle a hopeful look and Freddie laughs. “As if, dear. I’m not rewarding this behaviour. Go and do your essay.”

“But-”

“ _Go_.” Freddie insists. His voice isn’t firm but Roger complies anyway with a rueful smile. He’s not a _bad_ kid. He’s just, unfortunately, a kid. Freddie calls after him, “And make it _good_. Give me something to work with tomorrow, please.”

Roger’s responding “Yeah, yeah,” is cut off by the sound of his music clicking on and his door shutting. Freddie muses for a moment on whether he should go and turn it off, as part of some punishment he’s never been very good at implementing, but decides against it.

Instead he orders a pizza, because home-made meals are rare enough in their house without the added stress of all _this_ going on, and heads upstairs to decide what exactly a well-respected single parent wears to a parent-teacher meeting anyway.

***

They don’t have a car. Freddie can’t drive and Roger’s sixteen, so mostly they take the tube or the bus or even walk when they’re in the mood. When Roger came into his life, Freddie briefly debated getting his licence, but the thought of a small child in a car piloted solely by him and not, say, an upstanding member of society whose job it actually was to get people safely from point a to point b, was enough to talk him out of the idea quickly.

Roger has a school bus, thankfully, which picks him up from the end of their road, and although it’s student-only, Freddie has a knack for a well-hailed taxi. So once he sees Roger and the finally-written essay (which had seemed acceptable to his eyes, but as Roger had failed to inform him that this Dr May was a doctor of _physics_ , of all things, Freddie’s hardly an expert on the matter) safely onto it, he’d gone back into the house and made himself a calming pot of tea before he’d started making his own way to the school.

The request, though it had felt more like instructions when Roger had handed over the slip of paper from his teacher, had asked for Freddie’s presence at 10am when Dr May had a free lesson. Freddie shuddered to think about what kind of teacher would prefer a disciplinary meeting with a parent over a nice break to the daily lessons, but he had to admit he was a little impressed with the dedication. Freddie’d picked a good school for Roger to attend, and it was nice to see that that wasn’t all talk.

He gives his name to the reception and is instructed to wait on a row of uncomfortable looking chairs while they let Dr May - there’s a small tittering from the girls in the office at the name and Freddie thinks with horror that they’re laughing at the fate that awaits him - know that he’s arrived.

Freddie peers back and forth down the corridor for a few minutes, both keeping an eye out for the infamous Dr May and hoping idly to catch a glimpse of Roger in between classes, but in the end he picks up a magazine from the table beside him and begins skimming absently through the pages. It’s all education-related, of course, and thus highly boring, but it gives him something to focus on instead of the mild strains of nerves clenching around his heart.

He never liked school himself, and though boarding school was a vastly different experience than a London grammar school, he feels like a teenager again, waiting to be taken before the headmaster. His foot jumps a little and he fights to hold it steady. Lord, in this state, if this Dr May decides to give him or Roger a hard time then Freddie might be like to cry. 

He focuses on the scarily smiling faces of the art teachers in the section he’s flipping through, the only section really of any interest to him, and finds himself actually reading the article on the reforms to the art GCSE. So much so that he misses the first, “Mr Taylor?” altogether, and then the second on the basis that it’s not a name he recognises for himself. He looks up at the third, slightly louder and with a meaningful cough, attempt only because he’s been in doctor’s surgeries and flights where strangers have referred to Roger as such, and finds himself looking up, and then looking up again when he misjudges the height of this man, at a man in a nice grey suit with wild, curly hair, and a polite but getting more concerned expression on his face.

All of which is unnecessary window-dressing to the fact that this may be the single most gorgeous man Freddie has ever met.

“Are you talking to me, darling?” He asks, setting aside the magazine and tilting his head back to meet this man’s eyes. They’re an interesting hazel that Freddie imagines looks even nicer outside of the terrible school corridor lighting, and he suddenly desperately wants to see that.

Then he remembers himself, where he is, and straightens himself back up again sharpish.

“Are you Roger Taylor’s father?” The man who, oh lord this _can’t_ be Dr May, surely not, he looks both too young to be a doctor and too mind-numbingly good looking to be doctor of _physics_ , asks, and Freddie can’t help but laugh.

“Not his father, and not Mr Taylor,” he says, standing. God, Dr May is still _extremely_ tall when Freddie’s standing. “But I am responsible for him.” He waves the little slip of paper in the air and Dr May’s eyes watch it twist from side to side before snapping back to his face. “Freddie Mercury,” he offers, holding out a hand.

Dr May seems to take him in, top to toe and back again, as if trying to determine whether Freddie’s telling the truth - though why anyone would _lie_ about raising Roger Taylor is beyond Freddie - before taking his hand. His grip is firm. His hand is _large_ . “Brian May,” Dr May, _Brian_ , offers in return, and gives Freddie a tight smile. “Shall we talk in my office?”

He gestures for them both to start down the corridor, but stops at the glass window of the reception to ask a couple of questions of the girl at the front desk, who blushes lightly and hands over some post and rather a large pile of books with a smile. Freddie, now understanding the laughter a little better, can’t believe that none of the office girls felt fit to _warn him_. He’s dressed in a teal v-necked sweater for crying out loud, he clearly needed the warning about the good-looking science teacher, ladies.

The teal sweater in question is in fact both his nicest and his tightest and Freddie is profoundly glad that his other option, a soft red sweater that, while equally nice, has a little more give in his shoulders, was in the laundry. Not that it means anything, it’s just nice to feel nice when presented with an attractive man with incredibly big hands, Freddie feels.

“Can I help you with those, dear?” Freddie asks as they make their way through corridors and up stairs, because while Dr May has a good grip on the pile of books, it looks rather heavy. And while physical labour makes Freddie break out in hives, he’s willing to offer to lighten the load for many reasons, it possibly helping Roger’s case being third on the list behind the fact that they’re approaching a door and that he likes to appear willing whenever tall men are around. 

“That’s okay, we’re nearly-” Dr May seems to notice the predicament of the door just as they approach it, and frowns slightly, but Freddie is already reaching for the top three - as he suspected, _heavy_ \- books on the pile. “Thank you,” he says instead of finishing, now able to reach into his pocket and pull out a set of keys for the door with _Dr. Brian May, PhD_ written on the sign, which he unlocks and lets Freddie in ahead of him.

The office is small upon first entering, but Freddie has to instantly reassess that claim when he realises that, no, it’s not actually all that small. What it is, is cramped. Every surface is covered in papers and books, there are shelves lining the walls, all crammed full, and there even appears to be a telescope on a filing cabinet for some bizarre reason. He wonders how often star-gazing is an opportunity in school hours, then wonders how late Dr May actually stays. There’s a desk and two seats, one in front of the desk, and one behind, which probably answers Freddie’s question about whether Roger will be joining them. 

“Where do you need them?” He asks instead, wondering where on earth they could possibly fit eight more books, but Dr May through some form of dark physics magic, Freddie’s sure, finds a clear spot on top of a battered grey shelving unit for them all. 

“Thanks,” Dr May says again, and explains. “They’re for the sixth-formers, had to order them in especially since the schools’ copies are so heavily graffitied they’re impossible to learn from. You don’t want to know what they did to Venus.”

Freddie barely hears him because in the midst of that explanation, Dr Brian May, PhD, put his hand to the small of Freddie’s back in the lightest of touches to lead him towards the vacant chair, and Freddie’s pulse started hammering in his ears. It hasn’t been that long since Freddie’s last date, and definitely not since his last hook-up, especially not since Roger got to be old enough to be left at home alone for a few hours, but the touch still lights up Freddie’s body like tinder.

Then it’s gone, and Dr May’s words do sink in. “You bought them yourself?” Freddie asks, surprised, and Dr May pauses for a second before sinking into his own, much nicer, office chair.

“The students need the best that I can offer them,” he says, matter-of-factly, though there’s a slight flush over the tops of his cheeks that Freddie thinks he can only see because the other man is so pale. He shrugs. “We owe them that.”

“Well, I wish we’d had teachers like you at my school,” Freddie says, meaning it seriously but making light of the matter as Dr May seems a little caught-out at the notice. Freddie wonders if he’s strictly speaking _allowed_ to have bought these books, and likes the man even more so if not. “Might have gotten a little further with it all.” Though, Freddie was sure, definitely not to A-Level Physics. 

“Did you go to school here?” Dr May asks, and his eyes are bright with interest rather than just being polite so Freddie answers honestly. 

“Oh, heavens, no. Boarding school.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” Dr May says, and Freddie nods emphatically, laughing.

“Yes, quite, dear. My parents argued rather valiantly for me to send Roger off as well, they even offered to pay his way, but not on my watch.” It had been quite the argument, actually, almost worse than when he had told them he was taking Roger in in the first place. He shakes off that memory. “Did you?”

“Go to boarding school?” The corner of Dr May’s mouth quirks up, revealing some quite pointy white teeth in the smile. “I think if I had I’d be even less fun than I am now.”

“Go to school here,” Freddie corrects, rolling his eyes in a playful manner he should have really checked at reception but, in his defence, Dr May started it.

“Yep.” The ‘p’ pops as Dr May sits back in his chair and gestures to the walls. “This was my school.”

“And you came back to teach here?” The idea seems rather foreign to Freddie who, until Roger, had always had a _let the bridges you burn light the way_ kind of attitude when it came to leaving the past behind him. “Sorry, it’s just, you do seem rather young to have a PhD and be teaching.”

Dr May’s smile grows another inch. “Do I?” He asks, and it’d be almost mild except for how his eyes are hot on Freddie. “It’s thanks to this place, really. I had some good teachers who pushed me. _Which_ ,” and his voice turns professional and serious again, making Freddie notice that it definitely hadn’t been for the past five minutes. “Is what we’re here to discuss today.”

Freddie feels his nerves rush back and stifles a gulp. “Is Roger not joining us?” He asks, just to confirm, but he guesses that if Roger were required, he would be here by now. 

“I’ve spoken to Roger already, and will be again in his detention tomorrow,” Dr May says, easily, searching for something in the papers on his desk as he does so. This close, Freddie can see that there are in fact marks of organisation to the chaos, similar items paired together, reports with reports, essays with essays, photocopies with photocopies, but there just seems to be so much of it there that Freddie can’t even begin to parse how Dr May knows where everything is. It’s a lot of work for one man, it seems, and Freddie notes again the dedication it must take to set aside time in such an obviously busy schedule to talk about a student with their parent. He tries to tell himself that taking time out to shout at said parent wouldn’t be the best use of Dr May’s time, and that paired along with the brief and rather favourable impression Freddie’s already made of the man, calms him a little. Not much, but some.

“Ah,” Dr May says, triumphantly slipping a few sheafs of paper hanging together with a staple from one of the piles. Freddie recognises it as Roger’s essay, hurriedly printed out on their failing printer this morning before school, with one key difference. It’s already marked up. In the hours between 8 and 10am, Dr May has managed to sit and read through Roger’s essay and provide comments. There’s a % written - scrawled, really, in looping handwriting - in the top left hand corner and Freddie can’t quite see what it reads. “Here it is, Roger’s-” 

Dr May stops mid-word and Freddie stops trying to read the chicken-scratch writing, snapping to attention like he’s been caught out at something. Wide brown eyes meet suddenly concerned hazel, and a glimmer of understanding flickers across Dr May’s face. He sets the essay down again and when he speaks, his voice is softer, like Freddie is a spooked animal. “Mr Mercury, I think there may have been a misunderstanding here. This is not a disciplinary meeting. Roger already has his punishment for failing to meet the class requirements, the reason I called you in is to discuss it not happening again.” 

Freddie feels himself blink once, twice, and then a wave of relief crashes over him, so strong he’s surprised he stays in his chair. He lets out a breath and feels the tension that had come crawling over his shoulders ebb away again. “Force of habit, dear” he says, shrugging the moment off with a laugh. “I almost expected to be caned again.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Dr May’s eyes, almost imperceptibly, darken. Then, with a glint of teeth, “Not for a missing essay.”

Freddie feels twin spots of heat appear on his cheeks, and reminds himself firmly that this is Roger’s _teacher_. “Dr May-”

“Brian, please.”

That doesn’t help the matter, but from _Brian’s_ still present smirk Freddie’s not sure it’s meant to. “The essay,” he carries on valiantly, and Brian comes back to the sheets of paper with the air of a man who’d quite forgotten they were there at all. “Is it acceptable, at least?”

“It’s passable,” Brian admits, the smirk sliding away to become serious once again. He hands Freddie the essay, and Roger can see the red 80% quite clearly. “Which is the most frustrating part for me, actually. Roger’s not a bad student. He’s a good kid and he’s popular which unfortunately means he’s chatty and could do with focusing a little harder on his work, but he’s smart enough.” Freddie’s going to get that in writing, stick it up on their tiny fridge with a wonky magnet. Roger Taylor: Smart Enough. “If he can write this in a night, imagine what he could do if he applied himself.”

“He doesn’t exactly want to apply himself,” Freddie says, a little helplessly. “He wants to become a rockstar.”

Brian’s eyebrows lift.

“No, it’s okay, you can laugh,” Freddie allows, feeling a smile pull at his own mouth at the memory of Roger’s matter of fact delivering of this news when Freddie had asked him which A-Levels he was planning on taking. “I don’t think I’ve been the best example to him, really. I’m an artist, and I think he likes the idea of that kind of life, but it took me a long time to get to a place where I could support myself with it, let alone both of us.” And Roger’s definitely not planning on years of pot noodles, shitty flats, and minimum-wage side jobs before he _makes it big, Freddie, you’ll see_. Freddie would regret ever buying him that drumkit if it didn’t make Roger happier than anything else.

Brian nods, taking in Freddie’s words, but then he shakes his head. “I really don’t think you can blame yourself,” he says, and gestures absently around himself. “I teach hundreds of these kids and most are a similar story. Which is why I enlist parents.” And he points one long finger at Freddie. Freddie can see the bump where his pen must rest, the slight smudge of ink on pale skin, and looks away quickly. “Forgive me if this is intrusive, but you mentioned you’re not Roger’s father?”

“No,” Freddie shakes his head. “No, I knew his mother. We were friends in art school, good friends. She already had Roger, and we lived together for a while, the three of us.” She’d looked like Roger, Freddie always finds himself thinking. “Then she died, and in the absence of a father or any other family, I adopted Roger.” 

Freddie leaves out the sickness, the tears, the fucking fear he’d felt to be left holding a toddler he hadn’t the slightest clue of what to do with aside from what he’d picked up in the few years of co-habitation with a single mother. Brian doesn’t need to know _that_ and it’s long in the past now. Freddie had picked it up, somehow, and Brian’s right. Roger is a good kid. Freddie didn’t do too bad a job with him, current situation aside.

“That’s incredible,” Brian says, quietly, as if he didn’t mean for the words to slip out, but then he asks, “How old were you?”

“God, twenty five maybe? Twenty six?” That year was a blur to Freddie, as were at least the following three. “Too young.” He can hardly remember being that young. “So, no, I’m not his father, but-”

“You’re as good as,” Brian finishes, and Freddie smiles.

“Exactly.”

“So, from what I can tell, Roger’s not a _problem child_ ,” Brian’s voice makes air quotes of the phrase, and Freddie’s laugh prevents them from falling into any more serious a mood after that. “I’m not worried from that side of things, really, it appears to be more the issue of motivation, but I have to ask. Have you noticed any...concerning behaviour at home?”

Freddie thinks back to the condoms, the vodka, the occasional missing cigarette and ultimately shakes his head. “Not anymore than any other sixteen year old,” he says. “I was worse than him at that age.” At least Roger knows he can call Freddie if he needs to. Freddie spent his youth either sneaking out of school or out of his parents’ house, with more than sips of vodka in his system and precious few condoms to show for himself. “And it’s harder for kids to get away with it these days, not like when we were younger.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Brian says, quirking an eyebrow and looking amused.

“No?” Freddie challenges right back, because he’s surprised to learn that a man who makes casual jokes about caning at his place of work doesn't have a misspent youth to speak of.

Brian’s eyebrow lifts higher, but the joke’s on himself. “I got my PhD in _physics_ before I was 25. I only started having fun after that and not a second before.”

“And what was fun for you?” Freddie asks before he can help himself, leaning forward like he’s sitting opposite a man in a nice restaurant rather than a doctor in an office. He almost has to check that his foot hasn’t slid across the space between them out of sheer instinct.

“Back then, algorithms,” Brian laughs, sitting back in his seat to fix Freddie with a look that turns a certain kind of _teasing_ that confirms to Freddie that, no, he isn’t making this energy, easy and quick and lightning-hot, up. “Now, I think I’d need to buy you a drink first.”

Freddie ducks his head to hide his smile, his blush, and, thankfully, Brian moves the subject swiftly back to their meeting.

For the next twenty minutes, Brian details his plan. He outlines the term plans and the coursework involved, what the dates are so that Freddie can make a note of them - then, after seeing Freddie’s skeptical face, writes them down for him - and recommends a few books Freddie can pick up that would be helpful for Roger’s revision. It’s all very simple and all makes a lot of sense. Any lasting doubt he might have had about Brian’s displeasure at the missed assignment is firmly put to rest when he sees how enthusiastic Brian is about both his subject and about teaching itself. There’s a light in his eyes and a grandiose manner to his hands as he gestures his way through explanations, and Freddie really can’t help but watch him.

Then, sadly and somewhat alarmingly, a very loud bell starts ringing. Freddie startles for a second, and so does Brian, so caught up in what started off an explanation of the next class he’ll be teaching Roger’s class and somewhere along the way turned into an anecdote about the time he and a fellow student had tried to put some theorem or another into practise and had instead nearly destroyed a new car, and they grin sheepishly at each other before Brian admits that he has a class to teach after this.

He does walk Freddie out, though, leading him through the students milling through the corridors and this time Freddie does a very different search for Roger, if only to make sure he doesn’t see the gentle, barely-there hand that Brian has on the curve of his back to lead Freddie through the crowds.

“Thank you for coming in,” Brian says, signing Freddie out at reception, and hands him both the list of coursework dates along with the book recommendations so that Freddie doesn’t forget. Freddie takes it, and catches sight of something at the edge of the paper. Before he can say anything, Brian adds, “My number’s at the bottom there, in case you have any questions about anything.”

Freddie can’t help the smile on his face. “Questions?”

“Or comments,” Brian supplies, clearly doing his best to appear professional and not quite managing it. His hand is still on the paper, fingers barely brushing Freddie’s, and the way he smiles at Freddie, slow and certain, makes Freddie want to grab on tighter. “It’s important to keep a dialogue open.”

And then he’s gone, the bell ringing again to mark the next class beginning, and Freddie watches him disappear down the corridor until he’s out of sight. Then, he sends a text to Roger.

 **From:** **_Freddie_ ** **  
** **what would you say to me dating one of your teachers** **  
** **hypothetically** **  
** **or not**

 **From:** **_Roger_ ** **  
** **DR MAY??!?!?!?** **  
** **FREDDIE!!!!** **  
** **Im ruined** **  
** **I cant believe this** **  
** **Im never forgetting my homework again**

His phone buzzes a few times with Roger’s responses and Freddie glances at enough to realise that Roger, more than anything, is simply being dramatic. Freddie had to impart some knowledge somewhere, he thinks.

 **From:** **_Freddie_ ** **  
** **so whats the best way to continue a dialogue?** **  
** **as this is my first parent-teacher meeting**

 **From:** **_Brian May (Doctor!!)_ ** ****  
**How about Friday over drinks?** **  
** **;)**


End file.
